Aim: Central America is largely covered by hyperdiverse, yet poorly understood, rain forests. Understorey palms are diverse components of these forests, but little is known about their historical assembly. It is not clear when palms in Central America reached present diversity levels and whether most species arrived from neighbouring regions or evolved locally. We addressed these questions using the most species-rich American palm clades indicative of rain forests. We reconstructed and compared their phylogenomic and biogeographical history with the diversification of 54 other plant lineages, to gain a better understanding of the processes that shaped the assembly of Central American rain forests.Location: Central America.

Aristolochia L. is one of the largest genera of the Aristolochiaceae family, comprising at least 500 species that occur widely distributed in tropical and subtropical areas with two centres of diversity: Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic) and Brazil.Aristolochia is a shrub plant that grows as vines and stands out for its importance for ornamental and medicinal purposes (Fernández et al., 2019). Plant diseases can affectAristolochia production, negatively affecting growth and medicinal compounds. Sastry et al. (2019) listed three viruses infecting Aristolochia spp. plants: cucumber mosaic virus (CMV; genus cucumovirus) in A. zolligerriana Miquel in Europe and Taiwan (Chen et al., 2000;Horváth et al., 1975); tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV; genus orthotospovirus) in A. clematitis L.

In 2020, virus‐like symptoms such as leaf size reduction, mosaic, and blistering were observed in Physalis peruviana plants in Brazil. Isometric particles ca. 30 nm in diameter were observed by transmission electron microscope in leaf extracts of field‐symptomatic plants. Based on molecular assays and nucleotide sequencing of amplicons, cucumber mosaic virus (CMV, genus Cucumovirus) was identified in mixed infection with physalis rugose mosaic virus (PhyRMV, genus Sobemovirus). Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the CMV belongs to the subgroup IA. Symptoms like those of field symptomatic plants were observed on mechanically inoculated plants of P. peruviana. RT‐PCR confirmed CMV and PhyRMV infection. CMV was transmitted by Aphis gossypii to P. peruviana plants. This is the first report of CMV infecting P. peruviana plants in Brazil.